Piyush Goyal announces 319 MW of power to crisis-hit Karnataka

BENGALURU | Feb 26: Union Power Minister Piyush Goyal today announced an immediate release of 319 MW of power to Karnataka to help mitigate the power crisis the state is battling. This additional power, he said, will be available up to March end, and he will review the situation in April.

Karnataka is facing a shortage of about 2500 MW of power after the outage of Sharavathi generating station. Sharavathi and Nagjhari and Almatti hydel stations are not generating power, according to the load despatch centre figures.

The electricity supply companies have imposed load shedding across the State to overcome the tight situation.

The Union Power Minister announced some relief after a delegation of Karnataka MPs led by Union Ministers Ananth Kumar and D V Sadananda Gowda, and BJP State president Prahlad Joshi met him in Delhi today, and requested for the Centre’s help.

The delegation explained that the power supply situation in Karnataka is very bad and farmers are getting power only for two to three hours in a day. The MPs also said, due to poor rainfall last year, the hydel reservoirs have poor storage and are unable to generate much.

Goyal told the delegation that his Ministry is working on the concept of the One Nation, One Grid, One Rate. He said that there is no shortage of coal in any of the thermal plant. Shri Piyush Goyal said that the transmission capacity in South India has gone by 70% in the last two years, and it will go up by further 80% in next 18 months.